


I'll believe in grace and choice (And I know perhaps my heart is farce)

by blueangel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Magic, Mentions of past abuse, Multi, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueangel/pseuds/blueangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“How do you curse someone,’’ Arya asks again.</p><p>“Don’t go down that path,’’ Maggy warns.</p><p>Or: Arya and Sansa are witches</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll believe in grace and choice (And I know perhaps my heart is farce)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New year

Arya does her first bit of magic at the age of eight. Years earlier than Sansa and more explosive than her sister’s first attempts. Her first taste of magic leaves her bedroom curtains in ashes and her own hair singed at the tips; sparks skimming along her hands and the staccato beat of her heart in her ears.

Nonetheless, Arya feels triumphant in the wake of her mother’s fretting and Nan’s knowing smile.

* * *

 

This is the truth: Arya doesn’t think her sister has ever embraced her gifts.

This is the truth: Arya has-- _fully_.

* * *

 

Her father calls her wild, a faraway look in his eyes. Her mother chides her on her behavior. Her brothers ruffle her hair and call her rebellious, a fond look in their eyes. Sansa sometimes rolls her eyes at her antics, but her sister understands why.

Magic is wholly unexplainable and irrevocable; a thing that you can only try to grasp, but never truly reach. It just _is_.

And it is freeing. Every spell leaves her bare.

Even the littlest charm tingles on her tongue like pop rocks on Fourth of July. Yet, Arya knows that magic can become an addiction. It can be the drug-cocaine and meth all rolled into one-that can leave you breathless and clawing at the floor while you wait to hit rock bottom again.

“It is all about balance,’’ Nan had once explained.

It is, Arya agrees. It’s knowing about what’s too much and what’s too little. It’s knowing not to push her sleight of hand and when to shove back. Give and take. Push and pull. Light and dark. The key to it all, she knows, is finding your way to steady ground.

* * *

 

She is eighteen when Bran crashes his car. The police find the car wrapped around a tree, Bran mercifully thrown from the vehicle. Her family- parents, brothers, cousins, aunt, uncles- gather around the hospital; waiting in too hard chairs with Styrofoam coffee cups in hand.

Arya picks at her nail polish- a deep purple- as she and Sansa sit side by side and listen to the murmurs that echo through the hallway. An hour passes, then another and then another. She keeps her tears at bay.

Jon nudges her shoulder, “Why don’t I take you two home?” They both get up and Jon leads her out with a hand on her shoulder.

It isn’t long before they’re home and she and Sansa bound up the stairs; Sansa running to her room to take out the false bottom to her jewelry box and Arya loosening a floorboard in her room to take out her deck of cards- purchased from Maggie’s shop not even two weeks earlier.

She flips them: Past, Present, and Future.

The Emperor, Justice, and the Wheel of Fortune stare back at her. Arya looks up to see Sansa standing in her doorway, the same cards in her hand.

* * *

 

Maggy is old, Arya doesn’t know how old, but it doesn’t matter when she can see the waves that come off the one they call ‘the frog’.

‘’Move that box to the back room,’’ Maggy tells her, pointing with her cane. She maneuvers her way through the crowded shop, careful not to knock over jars of wolfs bane and ginger.

 She loves her job and doesn’t even mind when Maggy makes her work in the back.

It’s in the back room, when old relics and charms surround her, where she feels at home.

* * *

 

She meets Edric and she sees starlight in his eyes. He’s already holding Trystane’s hand of course, but then she thinks that they’re both beautiful.

(Arya’s never been one to overcomplicate things.)

* * *

 

Tommen reminds her of a kitten and Myrcella is more a lioness then the stags that adorn the Baratheon crest.

Joffrey reminds her of a rat, and she swears Cersei is more reptile than human, with her thins smiles and green eyes; of course, Sansa doesn’t listen to her.

* * *

 

Her sister spends two weeks in the hospital and Joffrey is in the back of a cop car. He’ll get out; he’s a _Baratheon_ , after all.

* * *

 

“How do you curse someone,” she asks Maggy.

“Don’t.“

* * *

 

Tommen moves out of his family’s house and in with ‘Robin.

“You owe twenty bucks,’’ she tells Sansa, the machines clicking in the hospital room.

* * *

 

Jon leaves for the Army and Arya cries into Trystane’s shoulder that night while Edric rubs soothing circles along her back.

* * *

 

Joffrey Baratheon gets out.

“How do you curse someone?’’

“Fortunes wheel always turns Arya.”

* * *

 

Sansa smiles at her reflection as Arya pushes her wheelchair towards the floor length mirror in her room.

“I guess Bran and I make a matching pair,’’ Sansa says dryly.

“It won’t be for long.’’

Sansa hums and twirls a lock of her hair.” Do you think it would look okay if I dyed it dark?”

* * *

 

Arya gets her haircut, a short pixie that makes Sansa frown.

“You singed your hair again.” At Sansa’s worried face, Arya shrugs. It’s not a yes, but it doesn’t have to be. They both know the truth.

* * *

 

Sansa moves out of the house and Arya goes with her, getting an apartment close to Maggie’s shop.

“How do you curse someone,’’ Arya asks again.

“Don’t go down that path,’’ Maggy warns.

Arya rolls her eyes, “You don’t think it would suit me?’’

Maggie’s lips thin and her face becomes shadowed. “I think it would suit you all too well.’’

* * *

 

This is the truth: Between the two of them Arya is the more powerful.

This is the truth: It’s why she walks a razors edge.

* * *

 

When Joffrey Baratheon dies in an _accident_ , six months later, Arya looks Maggy straight in the eyes. “I figured it out without you.”

“You’ve made a mistake,” the old woman tells her; it sounds like a prophecy.

“He deserved what he got.”

* * *

                                                                                         **Sansa**

Sansa hears voices in the rain.

She hears whispers when it splashes against the windows; some of them young, some of them old; some of them sad and some happy.

She can hear her family’s heartbeats when she sits at the bottom of their pool-not their laughter, or the splashing of water against tiles, but the pumping of blood through veins as if it’s her own.

Sansa knows if Robb’s been with Jeyne, not all the time, but when he trudges in the house soaked to the bone and dripping onto the floor, she can hear laughter where droplets have fallen off his coat or his umbrella, and hit the dark wood with a _tip tap._

She can hear the barest hint of thoughts when people cry; bits and pieces as tears slide down their cheeks and scatter across the floor like broken glass. She knows thoughts, dreams, and fears; that everyone wants the same things; some people are just more willing to take what they want, some choke under the want of it all, and some are just never satisfied, everything turning to ashes in their mouths. 

At the core of it all Sansa knows that people are like fine china: beautiful and breakable.

* * *

 

This is the truth: She gets her magic from her father, or rather from his side of the family. According to Nan, it’s been in the family for generations, each of the Stark women passing on their knowledge from mother to daughter. It’s Nan that tells her this and it’s Nan that guides her.

This is the truth: Arya doesn’t hear voices in the rain, or in the wind, as Sansa knows some witches can. Instead, her sister can conjure flames in her hands and light candles with a breath across the wick.

* * *

 

Sansa can barely stand rainy days, when she walks to the bus stop and its pouring buckets- a hundred hopes and worries dripping onto the pavement as the city bustles around her. It’s only her music that turned up to full volume that saves her from running back into her apartment and blasting the stereo, just so she can quiet the noise.

* * *

 

Sometimes she goes home to her parents for the holidays a little worse for wear. Her mother worries over her and her father hovers. Her brothers look like she might just drop on the kitchen floor. Arya is a constant: at her shoulder with a steady hand to catch her. It’s a small comfort when Sansa is bombarded with questions and feels ready to vomit chocolate mousse all over the floor.

When she is at her worst Arya takes her to their old room and pushes lemon balm tea into her hands; steady fingers drawing healing ruins on her skin with a mixture of spices and oil.

“It’s getting worse,’’ Sansa mummers one day before New Year’s. The holidays are never easy, everyone racing to get to that finish line. She is twenty-three years old and yet she feels a century older. (Sometimes she thinks that she’s just about ready to check out.) Calloused fingers press into her back; an acknowledgment. Of course, her sister already knows, she always knows.

“This will help,” Arya promises. Sansa holds onto her sister’s voice, the quick and steady tone keeping her tears at bay.

* * *

 

Arya never asks why she doesn’t move back to the country, where Sansa could find a sliver of peace. She knows that the screams of the city are better than the whispers of the country. She knows the ghosts that the forest can hold.

* * *

 

This is true: Kissing Joffrey Baratheon had been like having hot coals shoved down her throat.

This is true: Bruises and scars never truly go away.

* * *

 

The only ones who really know what they can do are Tommen and ‘Robin because while they both live on opposite parts of the city, Arya and Sansa, at the end of the month, migrate to Tommen and ‘Robin’s shared apartment.

 As always they are welcomed by the sound of meowing as Pounce purrs against Arya’s jeans and Tommen greeting them with a smile. Arya dropping their bags carelessly on the kitchen table while migrating to the living room.

“How is he?’’ Sansa inquires, hearing conversation start up in the other room.

“He’s getting better and better,’’ Tommen says coming to stand beside her. “ You would have never known he was in the hospital a few months ago.” He cracks a smile for her as she touches his hand carefully and draws some of his worry to her, letting it seep from him until his shoulders hunch.  

Tommen closes his eyes for a moment, shutting out the familiar jade colored iris, “Thanks I-“

“Come on,” Sansa interrupts gently.

In the living room, Arya talks animatedly with ‘Robin about her rugby team as he pulls on an oversized Oxford sweatshirt; an easy distraction.

Sansa turns back to Tommen who leans awkwardly in the doorway. “Does Chinese sound good?”

She nods and hums while ‘Robin strides over to the doorway and gives Tommen a quick peck on the lips and a whisper of reassurance.

As soon as they hear the door close Arya claps her hands together, “Well let’s get this show started, shall we?” Arya puts arm around their cousin’s shoulders while Sansa places a kiss on his cheek. They work in tandem as they light and place candles in a circle around the floor, ‘Robin quietly standing in the middle.

One by one, they meet in middle and sit, hands clasped together. Sansa takes a breath and meets her sister’s eyes, dampening the panic that wants to spill over. She shuts her eyes and finds that place inside her, like sitting at the bottom of a pool-weightless and silent-until she feels her sister next to her. Always, they are together in this kind of stillness, what are sisters for but a hand you can hold in the dark and the silence.

It is Arya’s hand that anchors her and her voice that steadies her as they sing with ‘Robin between them, a calming song that they had never learned but blossoms from their lips, wrapping around their cousin like a blanket. It isn’t going to be like pulling out a thorn,  Sansa had let Arya explain to their cousin, before the first time, it’s going to be slow and it might be painful but it will make you better. Sansa can’t blame ‘Robin for wanting to try, when his medication could no more. Her cousin lapped up his independence like a man parched who had finally found his oasis, and Tommen-

Tommen loved Robin. So Sansa draws the sickness from him like a needle drawing blood. In the end, she lays on the floor panting, Arya putting a cool cloth on her face with ‘Robin kneeling beside her; his cheeks flushed.

* * *

 

Sansa meets Quentyn Martell at the library, working the counter. He is not handsome. He almost never smiles, but it is his thoughts that draw her to him. Not certain thoughts of course, but the quiet and steady stream of them- like the babble of a creek- it is more peaceful than the rush she usually gets from the library, everyone trying to cram facts and figures into their minds.

Sansa isn’t even surprised to learn that he plays the cello. When she blurts this out on their fifth date, he raises an eyebrow.

‘’The calluses on your hands,’’ she explains rubbing her thumb along the palm of his hand, because how can he begin to understand that she had heard _The Swan_ , as water had dripped from his hair not five days earlier.

She learns that he is just as ambitious as the rest of his family-maybe even more so-the need to prove to himself that he is _somebody_ , more than just another Martell. She learns that he hasn’t seen his mother in eight years and that he was sent to boarding as soon as he could be shipped off.

“The others weren’t,’’ he explains, “just me.’’

She discovers that he can dance and though he doesn’t exactly enjoy it, he’ll take her dancing just to hear her laugh, telling her that she didn’t do it often enough.

* * *

 

He never asks about her scars, just presses light kisses to the knobs of her spine, and wraps an arm around her waist.

* * *

 

Her favorite thing about him though, is that she can hear the ocean when he plays; the bow moving along the strings like the waves receding from the ocean. Sometimes she leans her head back and closes her eyes and she can almost smell the salt in the air, feel coarse sand sticking to the back of her hands and feet.

‘’Sansa?’’ He always asks. Always, she opens her eyes and smiles.

‘’Was I being silly again?’’ She questions.

He always shakes his head and smiles.   

And she loves him, and in the web of her life, tangled and gnarled as it is, he is the simplest and the easiest to understand.

* * *

 

 Still, Joffrey Baratheon sits in the back of her mind, always.

* * *

 

This true: She thinks he knows. The way he smiles after she’s listened to him play, or when just once, she had pulled a red thread loose from his sweater and he had tangled their hands, like one of the old stories.

This is the lie: She’ll tell him, someday.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the Babel by Mumford and Sons


End file.
